So Premier Redford has released her expenses for Albertans to see retroactively, going back to 2008. That is what the CTF wanted her to do; but her motivation for doing so reeks of political gamesmanship.
The CTF filed Freedom of Information and Privacy (FOIP) requests on September 14th for her expense records with receipts. Over the last two weeks we have been working with government FOIP coordinators over the request’s wording and payment details.
The timing of all of this indicates that the Premier’s Office is aware of the CTF’s FOIP request for her expenses, and rather than have the CTF release this information, they would get ahead of the FOIP’s release and do it themselves.
Clearly, this government is starting to learn a few lessons in communications management surrounding expense controversies following the No-Meet Committee, AHS’s Meralli, and senator-in-waiting Doug Black: Put the information out ahead of the media or watchdog groups and look to be proactively transparent.
If I were the Premier’s communications director, I would have advised her to do exactly what she did. It’s good politics and good policy that Albertans can now see how she has been spending cash, but it was only done because they knew that the CTF releasing it would have been much worse.
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